Sins II: TEC - Omens of Conflict Update Changelog

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Release Status: *** RELEASED ***

Our July update has arrived and includes the new Future Orbit System! From the feedback you’ve provided, we heard loud and clear that you wanted a way to see how orbits would affect phase lanes over time. Now you can project these changes up to 1 hour into the future to assist with your plans for dominance.

We’ve also added a new scenario called ‘Twin Giants’, along with several new random map types.

Future Orbit System:

  • Added the "Future Orbit System" which allows players to view the future of planets, moons, and phase lanes at any point between the current time and 1 hour in the future.

  • Added the "Future Orbits" button to the top bar.

    • Left click the "Future Orbits" button to auto-play into the future.

    • Right click the "Future Orbits" button to open the timeline bar. Click and drag to view an exact point in the future.

    • Press the "~" hotkey and move the mouse left and right to quickly view an exact point in the future.

  • If you see an orange bar, the future data is still being generated. This should only happen at the very start of the game.

Scenarios:

  • Added 'Twin Giants" scenario. Two massive gas giants and their rich moons sweep through the otherwise sparse inner orbits. Your core empire is relatively stable so expanding onto the unstable gas giant clusters will require careful planning!

  • Added 2, 3, and 4 player random maps.

  • Fixed accretion disc on "Colliding Empires" scenario.

  • Sorted scenarios in scenario picker.

Gameplay:

  • Added "Derelict Specialist Team" ship item. Reduces the time to fully inspect derelicts. Will also provide a bonus to experience gained.

  • Added "Undersea Caverns" planet bonus. The ocean contains vast caverns providing space for extra planet components.

  • Added "Undersea Weapons" planet bonus. Buried deep below the ocean's surface are timeworn remains of ancient military technology.

  • Added oceanic planets to "Civic University" buildable list.

  • Added volcanic planets to "Military Lab" buildable list and removed oceanic.

  • Improved pirate raid events:

    • Added "event active" state similar to "auction active" so that players have more direction on when to increase bounty on enemy planets.

    • Added event levels for pirate raid events to scale up over time similar to NPC rewards.

    • Removed payoff bounty functionality. Made it too easy to ignore the event and simply pay it off afterwards; and was too confusing.

    • Increased the time before the first raid.

    • Reduced the supply of raids.

  • Added over-time bounty collection by having supply at a gravity well with bounty on it. You no longer have to destroy the planet to collect bounty.

  • Increased starbase and titan armor values.

  • When creating a game an extra team is added to match the player count of map. This way a FFA can be setup with no dynamic alliances (each player is on their own team).

Gameplay Bug Fixes:

  • Fixed Kol's Experimental Beam ability getting stuck targeting dead units.

  • Fixed pirate base having no civilian slots.

  • Fixed engagement range not accounting for close range weapons. Pirate Corsair was only ever firing missiles due to engagement range using max range of weapons, not the closest.

  • Fixed bug building finite items on planets. (ex. Smuggler's Den auction reward on asteroid.)

  • Fixed fleet owned deliverables showing up twice in production window.

  • Fixed target filter of Sova Deploy Missile Battery autocast. Should autocast on enemy targets, not friendly.

  • Fixed titan engagement range.

  • Fixed autocast of abilities that spawn (build) units when trying to place at an invalid position.

  • Fixed autocast of abilities triggering when attacking planet. (e.g., Kol using ultimate when bombing planet.)

Unit Control:

  • Added implicit hold order when moving to capture derelicts. This way ships won't fly off and attack when still capturing. Only applies when moving explicitly to the derelict as a target, not nearby.

  • Focus fire is now preserved when a user attacks a unit stack.

AI:

  • Fixed AI not firing Novalith cannon.

  • Changed ability autocast to always be true for AI players.

  • Prevented AI from building multiple titan factories.

HUD:

  • Prevent some unit icons from rotating (e.g., factories).

  • Added ability_is_missing_required_available_supply error message. This fixes confusion over why pirate mercenary base item is unusable when at max supply.

  • Added new asteroid main view icons.

  • Added new increase bounty icon.

  • Added per-unit selection to main view icons.

  • Added positive and negative buff indicators to ship window. Removes bloat in end-game unit tooltips by having dedicated buff indicator windows on the ship window bottom bar.

  • Added research links even if subjects are on the same column. Link goes directly up or down.

  • Improved research link pathing.

  • Added feedback to NPC rewards that are not usable. NPC market manipulation had no error click sounds or tooltips to say why clicking it did nothing.

  • Fixed bottom bar popups sometimes overlapping bottom bar.

  • Improved change time scale button: only one icon that doesn't change and show x1.0 in tooltip so it doesn't jitter.

  • Adjusted max distance for zooming and panning. Leaves enough breathing room from top and bottom bars but minimizes planet icons collapsing into each other.

  • Improved font rendering.

Tooltips:

  • Fixed DPS and armor penetration columns of tooltips sometimes being merged together.

  • Improved phase travel tooltips.

  • Improved tooltip text block line wrapping. Will now grow to wide tooltips.

  • Showed item ability upgrade values in tooltips.

  • Updated TEC ship tooltip icons.

  • Added tooltips for item unit_constraints.

Models:

  • Updated Ragnarov missile hardpoints.

  • Added level 3 Derelict Loot model.

  • Updated TEC shield meshes.

Visual Effects:

  • Added missile hit particle effect.

  • Fixed external color for particles being applied when it shouldn't.

  • Fixed flair effects not using player color if selected.

  • Fixed black box appearing around missile impact particles (7/26/23).

Audio:

  • Fixed "click failed" spamming dialogue lines for every mouse press. Now throttles the dialog and will play generic click failed sound instead for a time.

Modding:

  • Added rotate around axis with 0 radius to rotate particles in place.

  • Added orbit_speed_scalar and sync_orbit_to_parent to map creation nodes.

  • Added max_planet_component_slots to planet modifiers.

  • Added autocast jump range. (e.g., for units like the Novalith).

  • Added optional unit_constraint to unit_item to add more flexible conditions for limiting purchase of items (e.g., ship must have specific type of weapons).

Crashes and Asserts:

  • Fixed crash in prim3d lines at very rare values.

  • Fixed infinite recursion in pending damage when mixing damage-over-time with buff triggers.

  • Fixed left and right clicking draggable UI components at the same time causing crashes.

  • Fixed sync error in galaxy generator.

  • Fixed a crash caused by save games (7/26/23).

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15,578 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from Sins2 Forums Top

I'm not sure if its supposed to be like this, but I loaded up a 2vs2vs2 on Twin Giants the other night, and nearly all the gravity wells had only 1 phase lane connecting them. Basically, my ally was at the end of a tail with no access to anything beside the core worlds near it, and it would have had to pass through my territory to go anywhere, I was spawned in the middle of the tail and was close by an enemy and from there I had lanes going into the star area. It wasn't until around 1.5 to 2 hours that a whole bunch of phase lanes opened up. The enemy closest to me drifted completely away, but its ally drifted heavily into my area opening up multiple lanes into my core worlds and one of the gas giants finally drifted close enough to my ally which then opened up phase lanes toward the center of the map, whereas before that ally was completely isolated for most of the game(would have been nice if they had sent some of their fleet to help defend my gravity wells).

In anycase, I just thought that that was an odd configuration for the map, to have a spawn point which would remain isolated so long, and for there to only be 1 phase lane for each gravity well for most of the map, for the first couple of hours of gameplay. 

A bit of feedback:

I haven't really had time to go through a full playthrough of the Twin Giants system yet, or even a random 2vs2 or something, but I am really enjoying the future orbits mechanic. I have kept to keeping orbiting planets on no matter what in my ~130 hours of playtime so far, as I find the mechanic to be very immersive and entertaining in drawn out games, so it is nice to finally be able to click a button and get a sense of what gravity well is going out and what is coming in.

The planet bombardment effect seems to be fully working on asteroids now and looks pretty good, unfortunately I havent had time to do a full game lately so I haven't been able to check out that it is fully working on other planet types, but it is good to finally see it on the asteroids, I hope effects like this can get beefier in the future when more of the development is done and some attention can be paid to finely tuning visuals.

Did the AI get buffed or have its logic tweaked? I used to be able to hold down the fort and turtle up against Unfair AI, but since this last update it definitely jumps me before I am prepared. This is probably my own doing as I'm always trying to get away with rushing some upgrades and garrisons early on instead of building up a massive fleet, but it just seems like the AI is fielding its fleet even faster than before and able to power its way through level 3 derelict guardians without much trouble. I will have to go back down to Hard AI until I'm up to the task again, aww shucks, a game that actually makes me learn how to play.

Pirates are still pretty menacing and annoying in the early to mid game, but I'm glad their fleet sizes were nerfed a bit, it was real alarming watching them show up with 1k supply. I had a scenario where some pirates invaded my territory, bombed a world, and then I went and recaptured that world, and the pirates turned around to go back for it? I didn't see the whole thing play out because an enemy AI jumped into my system and wiped out my main fleet so I ended up rage quitting there before seeing what the pirates were doing. I understand there is already a visual indicator for what gravity well has a bounty, but I still end up looking around for it sometimes, like its obvious, but not obvious enough. You know when a planet is underdeveloped and it has a border that glows at varying intensity around it, something like that in addition to maybe a more recognizable pirate-like symbol would be make it much easier to notice and grasp in my mind that I need to do something at that gravity well. Just a thought.

 

I still need to put some more time into this update, but I have a feeling I'll probably be putting well over a thousand hours into Sins 2 as time goes on. Its another solid update that is building the game up into something fun to play, and I hope as time goes on, something fun to watch in cinematic mode during big 2000vs2000 supply fleet battles. I see you got place holders for Watch, so I'm hoping replays and streaming will be a built in feature in the future. I don't watch much game streaming, but Sins 2 I would check out just to learn from people who are better at it than I am, so I know what I can do to not get crushed so easily by the AI sometimes. I would probably even stream Sins 2 just because I think the game is so underrated and undervalued right now, really hoping it will draw a crowd as it gets closer to release. Keep up the great work, looking forward to the next faction being added and all the other cool things you will hopefully be able to do with this game!

 

Update: I went back and played against the AI(Unfair - Defensive) for a longer session and it turned out I was just mucking about with a bad build order, it is still very reasonable to field a large enough fleet for encounters with the AI in the early game while expanding and teching up.

Some additional feedback. I know this is a rather subjective thing, but the star background for the new scenario Twin Giants is extremely "busy" or "noisy" if you will. To me, it distracts and detracts from the overall aesthetic of the hud and 3D objects in the game. I played a 4 player random gen and was pleasantly surprised to see more star maps as I normally play the 5 player random gen. I like that there is a variety of star maps, and I thought it would be cool if we could get random star maps assigned when loading in, and eventually be able to just cycle through the various star maps with a key or menu option as we play. I really enjoy rotating around and looking at the whole map as I play and seeing my fleet in action from the different points of view. I will have to try out more of the random gen maps and scenarios to see all the star maps. Just another wish list idea.

Reply #2 from Sins2 Forums Top

Praise the Advent you fixed the Audio when you spam click. Could we also get that added to the NPCs? When I select my bomber wing and spam click on a ship, it's annoying hearing them repeat the same thing over and over. I know people might not spam click like me. 

Also, is it just me or does the weapons range on Starbase's a lot smaller? We used to be able to camp at phase lanes. Now the enemy ships just sit after they jump in. Knowing if they move closer, they will get hit. The only ship that attacks the Starbase is the javelins. 

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Reply #3 from Sins2 Forums Top

Quoting droc90, reply 2

Praise the Advent you fixed the Audio when you spam click. Could we also get that added to the NPCs? When I select my bomber wing and spam click on a ship, it's annoying hearing them repeat the same thing over and over. I know people might not spam click like me. 

Also, is it just me or does the weapons range on Starbase's a lot smaller? We used to be able to camp at phase lanes. Now the enemy ships just sit after they jump in. Knowing if they move closer, they will get hit. The only ship that attacks the Starbase is the javelins. 

 

I would definitely like to see some of the repetitive audio get cleaned up as games go on. Sometimes I like to just turtle up and put the game to 10x speed to see how effectively AI fleets can advance into fully garrisoned, dual starbased, fully upgraded tech tree territory after playing for some time. Lowering the frequency of audio cues at that point would be a nice option to have at some point.(wish list)

I haven't had the problem yet where AI fleets choose to not get close to starbases and artilleries from afar, or at least, they certainly aren't able to keep their whole fleet back when they do it. The range indicators are misleading in this game because a lot of gravity wells have different sizes/scale from each other, so a starbase weapon range is quite a good reach inside a small asteroid gravity well, but extremely small on a terran world with an extended gravity well size.

Reply #4 from Sins2 Forums Top

Most of the audio refinements haven't been addressed yet. They'll be coming. :)

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Reply #5 from Sins2 Forums Top

Exactly! 

But I have found some what of a work around with bigger wells. I hope they don't patch it. (Please don't!)

If you deploy a starbase from a capital ship you can get closer to the edge of the well to a point you can put your base right in the way of the enemy jump. 

Enemy jumps in and immediately gets bombarded, instead of having them go around my weapons ranges of the starbase.